The present invention relates generally to a cooling or heating apparatus and more specifically to a design for a tube-in-plate cold plate.
As it is generally known, overheating of various types of electronic components may result in their failure or destruction. The need for effective heat removal techniques in this area is accordingly a basic problem. Various types of systems have been designed to cool electronic components in order to increase the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of those components. In some existing systems, fluid has been passed through cold plates or heat sinks in order to transfer heat away from devices or components to be cooled. Such existing systems have used interface materials or epoxy to fill the air gap between the tube and the plate, in order to lower thermal resistance and increase the amount of heat transferred away from the component. However, the use of interface materials or epoxies in the manufacture of these existing cooling devices is costly. Moreover, existing cooling devices of this type typically have unequal cooling characteristics between their two sides. As a result, components mounted on one side of such cooling devices are more effectively cooled than components mounted on the other side.
For these reasons and others, it would be desirable to have a cooling or heating system featuring liquid flow tubes which does not require the use of epoxy, and which provides equivalent thermal transfer to components mounted on opposite sides. The system should be convenient to manufacture, and potentially applicable to use with a variety of specific types of electronic components, including Insulated Gate Bi-Polar Transistor (IGBT) devices.